Or, infrared reflectography. Or…neither?
Genius defies explanation. The forensic analysis of Vermeer’s paintings yields gorgeous insights — but not an explanation. Follow the logic through and you will also see why pseudo masterpieces do not deserve the stigma.
The National Gallery of Art in Washington has put on an exhibition on Johannes Vermeer, the Dutch painter of incomparable beauty — but more. The curators gathered not only the paintings but the findings of scientists who availed themselves of technology unheard of in Vermeer’s time.
It is now possible to look below the surface of the painting to each of its preceding layers; to understand all of the artist’s materials and the sequence in which he used them. Mary Tompkins Lewis writes of the results of infrared reflectography on Vermeer’s “Woman Holding a Balance” beneath the surface: “…bold, freely applied brushwork in the works’ preparatory layers that is dramatically at odds with the measured strokes we know from Vermeer’s signature polish surfaces” (Wall Street Journal).
Still more: It is not just under-strokes that technology now reveals. X-ray spectroscopy reveals “his ingenious use of a copper-based material to hasten the drying of black underpaint and prevent crackling or wrinkling that would mar the uppermost layer.” Still more: the use of the copper-based drying agent enabled four different yellow pigments and fluid paints, applied as delicate brushstrokes and dotted highlights, to coalesce as the luminous jacket in “A Lady Writing.”
And still more: When the new technology reveals in “Girl With a Flute” a different sequence of applied paint and other materials, and a less finely applied or mixed set of pigments, there is only one conclusion: Vermeer didn’t paint it. It was an imitation, a “pseudo-Vermeer.”
As if geniuses never alter their techniques. As if geniuses never produce works of varying quality. As if technology employed some 350 years after the fact can explain why the “pseudo Vermeer” has elicited the same awe, the same wonderment, the same immortal quality as the “real” Vermeers.
In an otherwise illuminating and insightful piece, essayist and art historian Tompkins falls prey to the genetic fallacy. It is fallacious to argue that origins explain everything. Actually, origins are the necessary but insufficient explanations of greatness. Others had access to Vermeer’s training or materials — but did not produce Vermeers. Others had Babe Ruth’s extraordinary eyesight, but did not transform baseball.
Others had Churchill’s education and background, but did not save the Western world. Tompkins concludes with reference to Vermeer’s “utterly refined, inimitable painting” that “has long eluded us.”
Amen —the intriguing findings of infrared reflectography and X-ray spectroscopy notwithstanding.
